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SEO Best Practice: SEO copywriting
The SEO Best Practice: SEO Copywriting Guide is part of Econsultancy's renowned SEO Best Practice Guide and is has been created with the help and frontline insight of globally-esteemed SEO practitioners, in order to give you the edge in your natural search marketing activity.
Account Director at dialogue marketing
27 August 2003 14:43pm
Hi - i'm not an expert on SEO - and usually recommend leaving SEO to the experts. I work for a promotional marketing agancy who often use the web to support promotions. At the moment we are launching a huge promotion with a household bread brand..... To cut to the chase you buy bread, collect tokens and swap tokens for sports kit.... simple.
We have decided to manage the scheme registration and ordering process online - and have partnered an online retailer to manage fullfilment.
The scheme will be supported by huge ATL spend, pack design and POS - ALL promoting the URL. www.kingsmillkitforclubs.com
We have used the basics i.e. meta tags, page titles etc to enable the engines to find the site - but thats it. At the end of the day the URL is printed and promoted across media - we felt this was enough....
Now the problem - an "IT" bod within the client has got wind of the project and is now causing issues - he has a "little" knowledge of SEC - and as they say, a little knowledge can be dangerous, he's joopardising our client relationship.
He's recommending.
- Links across pages
- Names given to link terms
- Key term prominence
- Key term density
- Alt tags on all images and buttons
- Comment tags
on top of meta data and page title info,
We recommeded employeing and SEO specialist - or sticking with the current strategy. I.e. meta data, page titles etc - I question the improvements that will be made by employing his recommendations, some of which will cause significant time / effort on our part....with no renumeratiion
The question ? will his recommendations make a fundamental difference? or not? - would we be best off using a specialist i.e. more spend - or should what we have done be enough?
At the end of the day - if he want gurenteed results what is required...
answers on a postcard...
thanks
Managing Director at Optimize Search Engine Marketing
28 August 2003 09:21am
Hello Tom (Crozza)
You're right to be a bit concerned about the advice you are being given because some of it is a little dated. However, your site could certainly benefit from some search engine optimisation.
For the most part, the main problem with your site (as far as search engines are concerned) is that you use Flash and frames. Most search engines have problems with both.
But for your specific questions - my 'back of a postcard' answer:
- Links across pages - Important for spiders to follow and find pages within your site. Ideally make sure links are RELEVANT between pages - and not links for links sake.
- Names given to link terms - If you mean use keyword phrases in the link text then yes that is important. Search engines use link text to associate relevancy of keyword phrases between linked pages.
- Key term prominence & density - Measuring these figures can become obsessive and take a lot of time and effort. Best to target 1/2 keyword PHRASES per page,. Write text the includes FULL phrases 3 to 5 times throughout copy. Spread use of phrases throughout page - particularly in at the beginning of text. Length of text you currently have on pages should be OK.
- Alt tags on all images and buttons - Only use alt tags to include keyword phrases if they are relevant to the image or button. They can help spiders.
- Comment tags - Only use for comments if they help you for coding, for example. Do not use simply to 'stuff' with keywords. Search engines are wise to that one.
And, with respect to what you have done to-date:
Page Titles - The same throughout the site. They need to be unique and relevant to each page.
Description meta tags - Again, they need to be relevant and unique for each page.
Keywords meta tag - ONLY include keyword phrases that are listed within the page. However, a FEW mis-spellings and synonyms can be added without fear of being penalised for keyword stuffing.
Hope this helps.
Mike Rogers
Account Director at dialogue marketing
28 August 2003 09:35am
thanks for the advice!
Chief Marketing Officer at Wordtracker.com
28 August 2003 11:01am
Hello Tom (Crozza)
The "IT bod" and Mike Rogers both make valid and useful comments. Links between pages and keyword rich linking text will really help. As an example, instead of 'sign up now' which is pretty generic, 'sign up now for free kits for clubs' is better because it includes the keyword phrases, 'free kits for clubs', 'free kits' and 'kits for clubs'.
It's easy to brainstorm linking text at the planning stage and well worthwhile. It also strikes me that with so many sports and so many potential inbound links to your site, a linking strategy would be a very useful addition to your marketing efforts. You can download a free report and case studies from my site at www.linkingmatters.com
Ken
Director at AlphaQuad
28 August 2003 13:15pm
Hi Crozza,
Good replies from the others but I'm afraid that they are being gentle with you.
Search engine optimisation is based on visible keywords, page content and site structure. The search engine needs to be able to answer the question "What is this page about?". It isn't very bright, no matter how many billions of pages it can remember, and unless you put the keywords in the places it expects it will think your page is about 'How does it work'.
I'll not repeat the posts of the others, save to say their advice is good. What I will add is that you need to choose your phrases with care. Is anyone looking for Gabby Logan and if so are they the people you want to attract to the site?
In all honesty you'd be better off building a different site to promote specifically to search engines. Not a copy, cloaked or anything underhanded, just a good alternative with plenty of content, plenty of keywords in the right places and absolutely no Flash on the home page :)
Feel free to give me a bell if you want some detail....
Good luck,
Jon.
01386 871384
SEO Director at Guava UK
28 August 2003 15:44pm
Crozza
like the others have said generally the IT guys on the right sort of track with regards to the SEO side of it, and I would say if this is a long term project then thats the route to start looking at, if you can get the site optimised properly before launch then do.
However I've not seen the site or the architecture so don't know what sort of changes are really required - infact you'd be shocked how many people apply standard optimisation rules to sites that are completely un-indexable to start with.
As marketing agency you'll need to consider how long the campaign is intending to run.
If like many marketing campaigns it only has a shelf life of a few weeks/months you may be better off going down a trusted feed or ppc route. The trade off is while more costly it will deliver faster results against a more diverse set of phrases, and save you the time and hassle of having to redo to the website.
It will also give you some assurance of the gaurantees your looking for.
Call me or Martin on the main number below if you need any more info.
Regards,
Edward Cowell
Technical Director
_________________________________________
Neutralize (*\*)
Independent Online Marketing Services
T: +44 (0) 8700 630707
F: +44 (0) 8700 630708
E:
U: http://www.neutralize.com
_________________________________________
Marketing Consultant at Green Link Consultancy
29 August 2003 17:31pm
I wouldn't worry too much about the extra work in optimising the site further. Looking at this from a promotional POV, the fact that the web address is going onto 1000s of loaves of bread AND point of sale displays AND you have an advertising campaign supporting the promotion too (no mention of if this carries through to ATL in new media, though) a site like this is going to get generous traffic levels with or without search engine recognition.
The amount of time and effort in putting extra SEO techniques in place for a 15month campaign would be better off supporting the real world end by bringing the promotion to the attention of club 'managers'.
Incidentally, I didn't see a bookmark this page hyperlink which, bearing in mind participants are likely to want to check they've collected enough points/vouchers for the kit they want, I would have thought a useful tool to have. And a recommend to a friend link so they can get their club mates involved too.
Just my tuppence worth.
PB
On 14:43:26 27 August 2003 crozza wrote:
>Hi - i'm not an expert on SEO - and usually recommend
>leaving SEO to the experts. I work for a promotional
>marketing agancy who often use the web to support
>promotions. At the moment we are launching a huge
>promotion with a household bread brand..... To cut to the
>chase you buy bread, collect tokens and swap tokens for
>sports kit.... simple.